Red Death Wave: The UK Under Attack

Chapter 1

Alien apocalypse. It's stupid when you say it out loud, a Hollywood blockbuster scenario that exists only to entertain. The aliens fly here in saucer-shaped ships but, after raining down destruction on the Earth, they are destroyed or otherwise defeated by plucky human heroes. But that's where Hollywood gets it wrong. When the aliens really came, the plucky human heroes never stood a chance.

*

The M275 motorway is a huge stretch of sun-baked concrete, glittering with the humped shapes of hundreds of crashed cars. They look like an army of dead beetles. It's easier to think of them as beetles because then I don't have to think about all the people who died inside them.

My little sister, Lola, tugs my hand, gazing up at me with huge eyes. "Maddy, are we going the right way?"

I smile back at her, even though she can't see it through the strip of cloth tied across my mouth and nose. "Don't you trust your big sis?"

Her small hand tightens around mine, so trusting that it makes my heart ache. Before the Others came, the biggest decisions I had to make were what outfit to wear, or whether or not my hair looked good. I wasn't in charge of keeping both me and Lola alive.

Reflexively I glance up at the sky, scanning the bright blue spread for the greenish glow of the mothership. It makes me sick to think how excited the world was when we saw the first satellite pictures of that spaceship. If we'd known then what we know now...the thought dies in my head. It probably wouldn't have changed a thing. Even if we'd known the Others did not come in peace, we still couldn't have prepared for the devastating attacks they launched upon our planet. The attacks that left the world in ruins.

First there was the massive electromagnetic pulse that ripped across the Earth a few days after the mothership was first spotted, obliterating anything that ran on electricity, batteries, or an engine. Our dad's plane was one of many to come down, dropping out of the sky and killing him, along with half a million other people worldwide. At least he died quickly.

The 2nd Wave came shortly afterwards, the Others generating colossal tsunamis that smashed into every coastline across the globe. California, Washington, London, Sydney, Hong Kong - just washed away like toys. That was when Mum died, swept away in a raging torrent of water while Lola and I clung to a rooftop and prayed.

I thought things couldn't get worse than that.

But that was before the 3rd Wave.

That was before the plague.

The car ahead of us is skewed across the road, its doors hanging open. A bloated body is slumped over the dashboard, flies buzzing like a black halo around its head. I try to position myself between Lola and the car so she doesn't have to see inside, but it's a pointless gesture - she's already seen too much death and suffering. And there are so many bodies on this stretch of road that I can never hope to keep her from seeing all of them.

"Are we nearly there yet?" Lola asks.

I shade my eyes with my hand, gazing down the motorway. Above the sun-gleaming roofs of so many cars, birds wheel in huge flocks, swooping down and pecking at the buffet of the dead. I can't think how far Gunwharf is from this road - I've only been there in a car before, and every time I was glued to my phone while Mum drove. But I don't think we have much further to go.

"Sure we are, kiddo," I say, injecting false cheer into my voice. It's taken us more than a day to get this far, though I'm sure it used to be about twenty minutes in the car. But it's hot out here, and we have very little food or water. Lola often wants to stop for breaks, and I'm not going to deny her that. And then there's the matter of navigating the myriad stalled and crashed cars. It's no wonder progress is slow.